


Spinning Lies and Dreams

by JessaLRynn



Series: The Enigma Variations [3]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Everything Hurts, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Post-Episode: s04e13 Journey's End, The Author Regrets Everything, not really a song fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-07-06 04:06:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15878187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JessaLRynn/pseuds/JessaLRynn
Summary: He has just squandered his second chance, the one he would have spent entire life times waiting to find. He has tried to tell himself that it’s okay, that this is the way he wants it, that he has done the right thing. He is so tired.





	Spinning Lies and Dreams

He has just squandered his second chance, the one he would have spent entire life times waiting to find. He has tried to tell himself that it’s okay, that this is the way he wants it, that he has done the right thing. He is so tired.

He has been lying to himself for ages, and one more lie surely cannot hurt him, not if it defends him. It will become a guardian and a shield, this lie, that she is safe and that her safety is all he ever wanted.

He will cling to it, this lie that is the only thing left to hold his hand.

They have all gone now, back to their lives and into their futures. He is alone, as perhaps he has always been meant to be. They go on into the sunshine, but the Storm remains, trapped in his endlessness, bounded only by his fear.

There is nothing left to him but the things that hunt him, the vultures of memory and fact that circle him, waiting for him to fall. He will always run, and it will never be enough, and for now he is content to know that someday the wolves will pull him down.

She comes to him, then, as he waits in his silent shadows. She is young and blonde and gentle, as is the custom for her kind, a Soul Healer with a subtle smile and a beautiful face. ( _But not_ , his absent hearts remind him, _so beautiful as what you left broken behind you_.) She seeks him out because she is drawn to sorrow, because her people are born to serve as distraction and comfort.

“What’s your name?” he asks her, because he knows he is going to give in to this.

“Angel,” she says, in a voice like winter wind, “but you don’t have to use it.”

“I won’t,” he admits, and even if it tears him in two (again) he will be honest with her that much.

“Do you want to tell me yours?” she asks.

“I don’t know it anymore,” he answers, thinking that honesty may be easier than he believed. “Someone else is living my life. All you see before you is empty.”

She places a comforting hand against his face. “Empty can be good. Let me show you.”

She leads him away and he follows because the straight lines he has been bound by all his life have left him nothing but soul-destroying martyrdom and a constant dirge of memory in indigo and crimson. She will take nothing and give nothing, but there is release in that balance of neither seeking nor sought.

They go to his room, lonely, bleak, and despair-filled place that it is, so cold with the shadows and the wreckage of his constant thoughts. His mind is a vast and chaotic place, and it has littered this room, unbidden, with the ghosts of roads not taken.

He will take this one, instead, and he will close his eyes and he will pretend to forget.

Her first kiss is like fire and like honey, and he is surprised that his senses can lie to him as well. For a moment… for just a moment, he believes he smells the salt of the sea while her lips take his and grace them with a kiss he doesn’t care about in exchange for the one he… he will not think on it.

“I’m an alien,” he says, when she parts from her little feast. “Is that a problem?”

“Does it bother you?” she asks.

“It hinders me in everything.”

“Then don’t think about it now. Just be whatever man you would wish to be and I will be whatever woman you imagine I am. Close your eyes, and let yourself fly.”

He wraps his arms around her, instead, and lets himself fall. He drops, weightless, to the bed, with her in his arms, and it is madness, utter madness, but so very sweet. He builds the lies with his eyes closed, constructs them deftly, even with the trembling digits of a man who has sacrificed his right hand wrongly to protect that hand’s mate.

Their clothes are gone and their silence, but his ears rebuild her sounds to a sweeter, unforgettable voice. His nose rearranges her smell of lavender and laughter into moonlight and rain. His hands touch skin that he will never touch again, but it is not her skin he caresses.

She cries out when he enters her. He does not dare be tender — he has no right and neither does she, when he is not where he should be and she is not the one who should be with him. This is not about love or sharing or even sex. It is about sorrow and regret and forgetting, about lies upon lies, about finding a blinding moment to dash the memory from his veins.

He strives ever forward, spinning fairytales and time with every thrust and answering arch of her form. He lets her hold him, because he needs her arms — someone’s arms — to anchor the shattered shards of his soul to his mortal (in his dreams) body.

What he has done falls away, replaced by this glorious illusion. The fragrance of salt becomes stronger, but she does not complain at his tears.

He believes in her, in the woman she is not, in the mirage he has made her to be. Her hands stroke him comfortingly, hot against his skin, hot enough to burn the lies into sense memory, to blast his mind clean of shadows and light at once.

She brings him gently, without a whisper. He speaks as it happens, one word, four simple letters that will always be enough to keep him strong and break him completely at the same time. He burns for her, the woman in his dreams, and as the flames consume him, he is content with the utter comfort of the escape.

The fire dies, though, and memory returns and with it the knowledge that he is always wrong, never good enough, almost absurdly imperfect. Betrayer or betrayed, he can hardly imagine, but whatever he is, he has brought it all on himself.

The girl seems content with what he has done, a genuinely happy little smile on her face as she leaves him. He finds no solace in even this, because he knows that he has shared with a stranger what he would never dare to claim, what he will die to want. He cleans himself up perfunctorily, and memory and wish take him back to bed.

He will dream, there, in the arms that will never hold him. Maybe there, at least, he will find some small measure of peace.


End file.
